by Domenico Maceri * –
SAN LUIS OBISPO (USA). A few months after his election as Senator from Delaware in 1972, Joe Biden lost his first wife Neilia and his one-year-old daughter Naomi in a car accident in which his other two sons Beau and Hunter were seriously injured. In 2015 Beau, the eldest son of then Vice President Biden, died of a brain tumor. He was 46 years old. Barack Obama’s deputy was in modest financial circumstances and was considering selling his home to cover his son’s medical bills. President Obama, who had made substantial profits from publishing his books, promised to pay his expenses. The case ultimately settled without financial problems for Biden, but the tragic deaths weren’t Biden’s only anguish.
These days Hunter, the only one still alive of the three sons of the US president, has been the subject of media attention that has cast a shadow over the current occupant of the White House.
Biden’s second son had a reckless life with a drug and alcohol problem, but his international finance deals made him a prime target for Donald Trump and his Republican allies. Hunter allegedly committed international lobbying and money laundering crimes using the family’s surname to find clients. The Justice Department had opened an investigation into these allegations in 2018, when Trump was still president. Last month, after a five-year investigation, the matter appeared to have reached a conclusion with a plea deal that would have avoided prosecution. Hunter had pleaded guilty to tax evasion and illegal possession of a firearm. However, the judge found some unclear points and recommended that the two parties review the agreement.
Political pressure from Republican rhetoric and possibly other as-yet-unsurfaced information convinced Biden-appointed Attorney General Merrick Garland to promote Justice Minister David Weiss, a Trump appointee in 2018, to special prosecutor. This “promotion” will give him more resources to complete the investigation, and whether it will be necessary to indict Hunter or silence the corruption allegations leveled against Joe Biden himself.
It is not clear what may have convinced Garland to change the role of Weiss, but from a political point of view, things are clearer. A special prosecutor, loaded as such with a certain objectivity, gets more maneuvering power and impermeability from possible political accusations.
Garland had already done the same thing with the appointment of Jack Smith as special prosecutor for the January 6, 2021, 2021 insurrection. His work “earned” two criminal indictments against Trump, one in the case of top secret documents and the other for conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. The special prosecutor gains a certain independence and even legitimacy, and in the case of Weiss, nominated by Trump and reappointed by Biden, you would have a prosecutor with ties to the two recent presidential administrations. Biden does not comment on ongoing court cases, unlike Trump who poisonously and vulgarly attacks prosecutors and anyone who does not show reverence towards him. In short, Biden behaves in a presidential manner. Answering a reporter’s questions about whether the president would be willing to pardon Hunter, the White House spokeswoman answered with a resounding “no”.
Republicans have sharply criticized the nuanced plea deal as a slight tug of war and have called for the appointment of a special prosecutor. But now they are not at all satisfied. Garland’s action deprives them of the opportunity to scream at not only Hunter’s corruption, but also the alleged corruption of his father, the real target of the Republicans. Trump, trying to distance himself from his own judicial woes, bearing in mind the 3 criminal indictments and the fourth just announced in Georgia, would like to pollute Biden’s reputation. He often does it in his venomous tweets accusing the current president of using the Ministry of Justice to persecute him for political reasons.
By attacking Hunter Biden, Trump and his Republican allies, especially in the House, are trying to pollute the waters and divert attention from the former president’s very serious judicial problems. Without defending Trump’s innocence, they limit themselves to generally attacking the Ministry of Justice, which according to them reflects double standards.
Hunter Biden is the only son of the current president, who has often acknowledged his son’s difficulties by continuing to show his affection in public and even in private. This relationship has been exploited and in the political field it focuses on the suspicious aspects, generally ignoring the personal ones. However, the two often intertwine. Hunter largely sat out the 2020 presidential political campaign that saw his father elected president.
Weiss’s appointment as special prosecutor could create dark clouds for Biden’s re-election. However, analysts say that the candidate’s family members have little influence on success at the polls with the so-called “swing voters”, the swinging voters who have a strong influence on the final outcome of the elections. According to some Republican analysts, these voters demonstrate empathy for Hunter Biden’s personal problems, which they see as separate from President Biden’s work. These voters see the personal problems typical of all families. The fact that Biden has repeatedly expressed words of encouragement and love towards his son publicly could even prove to be a positive factor from a political point of view. Humanity, on the other hand, is a quality that seems to be completely absent from Trump’s language and demeanor.
* Domenico Maceri, PhD, is professor emeritus at Allan Hancock College, Santa Maria, California. Some of his articles have won awards from the National Association of Hispanic Publications.
